


Souvenirs

by MechanicalHeart



Category: Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Hangover, M/M, Roughness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26176987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MechanicalHeart/pseuds/MechanicalHeart
Summary: Alex wakes up after a party, not knowing where he is.
Relationships: Miles Kane/Alex Turner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	Souvenirs

**Author's Note:**

> This is a oneshot I had started working on months ago.  
> I had a surge of inspiration and finally finished it today. Hope you enjoy.

Something fell over in the house. A loud CLANG followed by smaller ones. It made him open his eyes, or at least try to, since they seemed to be glued shut and every tiny ray of daylight hurt his head. He could hear birds chirping nearby. It was the only sound in his surroundings. He did not enjoy it.  
"Urgh," was the most comprehensive expression he could muster. It felt as if his body had been turned inside out and he was now wearing his skin the wrong way round. This was awful, everything was awful- and he didn't even know where the fuck he was. The idea shot a dose of panicky adrenaline through his veins. It was enough to make him jolt up. The movement was too much for his head and neck and he immediately fell back. He was lying on something soft. He checked if his arms still worked and let them slide over the surface. Probably a bed? But the texture felt too rough for a bed sheet. Bracing himself for the incoming headache, he made another attempt to open his eyes. Right. He was in a house. He didn't quite remember whose house but it was not his own. He was slightly elevated from the ground. Ah. It must be a couch, he figured. He was on a couch, and under a blanket. If he wasn’t mistaken he could even feel pillows, next to his head and next to his stomach. Great. Now he could close his eyes again. 

He dozed off again, for an hour or so. It took some time for him to fall asleep. The couch felt like a tiny little rowing boat lost at sea and his heartbeat was so fast it would have frightened him if he had been a little bit more conscious. Fortunately for him, he was not.   
The sunlight moved across the wall and the ceiling, slowly, slowly; highlighting dust particles floating in the undisturbed indoor air. It took about fifty minutes for the light to reach his face, illuminating his pale skin, dry lips and darkened eyes. It was too bright to ignore. He opened his eyes and groaned again. The nap had not helped with the headache and general feeling of malaise. The one positive was that the dizziness was now gone. Great. He didn't want to throw up; he couldn't remember where the toilet was in this mystery house. Blinking at his surroundings, memories slowly crept up to him. Incomplete memories, only telling a fraction of a story and nothing of its ending. Images passed by, of colourful drinks, far too many colourful drinks, and each colour hurt him. And... a pool? Glassy water and shimmering spots of white light.

It was best not to think for a moment. If he could just manage to stay right where he was and not move in the slightest, he might have a chance of getting through this okay. A few more minutes. A few more minutes...

"Alex," somebody mumbled, right the fuck next to him. He instinctively moved away from the source of the unwelcome sound. There was a high tone ringing in his ears. Last night had probably been loud.  
"Hey, now. It's just me."  
He tried to focus his vision. Miles. On his eye level. He was on his knees, maybe. Yeah... likely.   
"Are you alright?"  
"What?" Alex replied. He had wanted to say "What makes you think I'm not" but it would have been too much effort. His voice came out like a low rasp.  
"Are you alright?"  
"Yeah, I suppose."  
"Good."  
Now that he was this close Alex had the opportunity to study his face. He didn't look too great, either: tired and hungover like he was, himself. What immediately caught his attention, though, were the large bruise on his neck and the dried blood on his lips.   
"What the fuck happened to you?" he asked, his mouth slowly widening to a grin.

To his vague surprise, the humour of the situation was lost on Miles, who looked the other way. His voice sounded way too earnest for Alex's taste when he said "You don't remember?"

Alex tried to swallow; it was not a success.   
His eyes wandered around the room, hoping that if he would just see that single solitary item, that one artifact that he recognised, the whole evening would rush back to him and everything would fall in place. But the room was nothing out of the ordinary. It did not hold curious things his mind would latch on to. No shimmering plastic ornaments, no tacky wannabe-African art object bought at an IKEA. It had tables, some chairs, a cabinet with plates and glasses. A couple of standing lamps. No more than that, not even a rug. The room had been emptied, he guessed, before the party had started. To protect any valuables from getting ticked off a table by a drunk invitee, or thrown into the pool by violent hooligans. This decision had proven to be wise as the floor was absolutely strewn with garbage. Empty glasses, half empty beer bottles, crumbs from chips, crumbs from cake. The air had not moved for hours, had stayed still, sweltering like a hot air oven; it smelt like alcohol and it made him nauseous all over again. He wondered what the crowd had been like.  
  
"Whose… whose party was this?"  
Miles posed in a way that reminded Alex of the Thinker, slowly running the back of his hand, then his palm over his chin, as if testing the sharpness of his stubbles.   
"Mine, of course."  
"Wait… This is your place?" Alex blinked. This was stupid, of course it wasn’t.   
"We rented it. We have it until tomorrow. I figured there’d be lots of cleaning up to do." Miles looked over his shoulder, demonstratively. Sarcastically. "This is pushing it."  
Hoping he wouldn’t have to help, Alex looked for a different subject to steer the conversation towards. He came up with nothing and just pulled the blanket closer to his face. As he did so he came to a realisation that made his blood turn cold in an instant. It wasn’t a blanket. It was a piece of clothing, a loose kimono? A bathrobe? What the hell was it? He resisted the urge to lift it up and get a closer look at it, because he felt that touching the clothing item was his own bare skin. Whatever it was, it was a soft, pastel orange and it was the only thing covering him. With a trembling lip, suddenly noticing his naked feet peeping out from underneath the summer dress, the sarong, whatever- they were so pale, so blue, so very naked- he looked to Miles.  
There was nothing else in his proximity he could use to hide his body, nothing at all to wear. He would have been happy with a beach towel. There were bound to be some beside the pool. The pool seemed as unreachable as the surface of the moon.  
But Miles did not bat an eye at Alex being covered by a single layer of cloth. He crouched next to the couch, giving his knees some solace from the hardwood floors, as if it was normal for him to find his naked friend asleep on his couch in the morning. As if it was a regular thing that happened.   
"You’re so…"  
Reckless? Hungover? Irresponsible? Alex’s eyes followed Miles’s hand as it moved towards his face, touching it with just his fingertips, afraid to burn himself.  
"…gorgeous," Miles mumbled, looking away. He seemed to regret the small gesture of intimacy immediately after he had given it, and pulled his hand back to cover his eyes.   
Everything inside of Alex was unstable, shaking like invisible tides deep in the ocean. The dried blood on Miles’s face alarmed him and the lost look in his eyes alarmed him just as much.  
"Who hit you?"  
"Alex, come on." His face wringed as if he was in pain. And with wounds and bruises like he was showing, that was not hard to believe.  
"What?"  
When there was no answer, Alex insisted. "I really don’t know. I don’t remember what happened. Tell me!"  
Miles smiled in a strange, cynical manner unfamiliar to Alex. "This…" he pulled his collar back to better show the bruise in his neck. "This was all you."  
The contrast between his dark blue shirt and the purple bruise was eye-catching. Alex’s shocked expression was enough for him to grin and continue his explanation. He pointed at his lips and licked them, his tongue bringing the blood back into his mouth. Alex cringed. "Also you."  
He investigated the back of his hands. "I think I have some bitemarks, somewhere… Hm. I guess they weren’t that deep."  
His gaze returned to Alex and decided to stick around. It made the object of his stare very uncomfortable. But there was nowhere to run to.   
"You look mortified."  
"I’m sorry."  
"You weren’t sorry when you did it."  
"I’m so sorry,” Alex cried. “I don’t know what I did! I don’t know why!"  
"Don’t feel too bad," Miles sighed, scratching the gape of his neck. "I got you pretty good, after all."  
Had he..? Without moving, Alex tried to make a little trip in his own body, reaching out the tips of his awareness to the edges of his limbs. If there really were injuries he didn’t feel much. Maybe that was just the headache overpowering everything else, though. When he reached his legs he suddenly noticed a burn on both of his knees. Scraping wounds. Probably caused by a rough floor. And now that he was searching for signs of trauma, the right side of his face was warm, throbbing and swollen. He wanted to touch it, driven by instinct, but stopped himself.  
"How’s your head?"  
"Hurts like hell."  
Miles let his head hang down in guilt and shame. "It was bound to hurt. I didn’t mean to push you that hard." He shrugged, helplessly trying to shake it off. "I tried to catch you but you know how that goes when you’re too drunk to stand on your feet."  
 _Miles, what did we do?_ Alex wanted to ask. He wanted to demand answers, wanted to force them out of him. He needed to know, and this need to know was almost palpable. Just before he decided to open his mouth and start yelling through the pain, he remembered.

His head? He had hit the floor, falling backwards. Miles had made a half-assed attempt to catch him but in his intoxicated state it had been hopeless to begin with. He had slipped. No shoes on his feet. His hands, one of them firmly gripping Miles’s shirt collar and the other holding on to his arm, had dragged Miles down with him. Even the memory of the impact shot a surge of pain through his body. He had screamed, he had cursed. Miles’s face hovering over him, swimming in a sea where everything moved slow. Questions about how he was, if he needed help. If he needed a doctor. No, no, no…  
Then, an attempt to kiss his pain away. That had to have been it- there was no other explanation. Miles’s lips on his face, everywhere- slowly growing hungrier, slowly losing his restraint, the little restraint he had had left. There had been nobody else left at that time. At least, that was Alex’s assumption. They wouldn’t have done what they did if anyone could have seen it, would they? He had to believe they wouldn’t, had to believe that he could trust Miles to keep it discrete and subtle. He had to believe that there had not been an audience to this particular stage play. Nobody had seen Miles lick his lips, just like nobody stood watching as Alex opened his mouth to let him in. No witnesses, not even one- not to this ecstasy, this loss of self-control on his part. He had to believe that. He had to believe it, so he wouldn’t lose his mind.   
He had tasted blood. Miles had already been bleeding at that point. Paradoxically, he had been the one who wasn’t careful, who had propelled himself towards him, on him, all over him.

And that hadn’t been the start of it.

Chasing his fading recollection of the night before, grasping at straws as they slipped through his fingers, Alex remembered. Whispers, hisses, in the kitchen when nobody was watching.   
"Let’s get out of here," he thought he had said, leaning against the counter, evading the plates and bowls full of snacks and stacks of wine glasses and finding a tiny little spot for his hand.  
"I can’t," Miles had laughed, a hint of regret in his eyes. "This is my gig."  
Hands, hungry, grabbing his arm, his thigh, his side. They spoke the opposite of his words. He recalled Miles clenching his teeth. He recalled impatience, like in a dream when you want to have your way with someone but cannot seem to get them alone. Impatience that made his fingers twitch and his breaths shallow. Impatience so heavy it was almost maddening.   
Boring conversations in the living room, under the chandeliers, boring conversations in the garden. Maybe they hadn’t been. He had not been paying enough attention; he was too busy looking past the others and past the hedges, too busy being on the lookout for him, his host, the magnificent Mr. Kane.

Paranoia crept up on him, thinking somebody had to have noticed. They had been so obvious- again. No matter how many plans they made, how many promises to stay quiet, to be careful… they were transparent like glass. How do people do this, Alex cried silently, how do they manage to hide the center of their being?   
  
"I want them all to leave."  
"Stop it, Alex."  
"No."  
"Just wait."  
"How much longer?"  
"Just wait."

Off he went, back to entertain, back to serve drinks on platters. Alex had taken a glass off of his hands, not even caring what he was going to be drinking, and he remembered how he had stared at him as if he wanted to devour him, how he had tried to convey everything he wanted to say to him. Wisely, Miles had turned away from him, pretending not to notice.   
  
Alex laid his palms to his eyes. He really felt the swelling, now. A reflection of Miles’s fists. It seemed they could never be gentle, could never take things slow.

"We can’t keep doing this."  
Staring at the ceiling was a more productive pastime than ponder Miles’s words, and he knew Miles knew it, too.   
"You know, sometimes I wonder… if the alcohol is the root cause of this or if it just brings out things that are already there."  
What a futile discussion, what a useless thought experiment.  
"Could you stop with the philosophy test in the early morning?"  
Miles showed him his wrist watch. "It’s two PM."  
"Oh, Jesus." Alex pressed one of the pillows to his eyes.

They were still. The air floated between them and around them.   
Alex wanted so many things. He had the energy for none of them. But he knew, even now, in all of his nausea and all of his pain, that he would be up for anything. _Anything_ , as long as it was Miles. If it was Miles he would laugh through it, grit his teeth and suffer through it. He would savour the bruises, rock the scratches and the scrapes, as undeniable souvenirs of his hands, his nails, his teeth. He knew this as clearly as he knew that he had a terrible, terrible hangover.

Miles got up.  
"D’you want a glass of water?"  
"Please," Alex groaned from underneath the pillow. He listened to Miles as he walked off towards what he presumed to be the kitchen, to his footsteps on the wooden floor, growing more and more distant. He had put on his shoes to protect himself from broken glass.

Saturday, the 29th of August, 2020


End file.
